Is Christianity Good?: College Students Answer | The Populace

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My name is Zach Conover and this is The Populace. The purpose of The Populace is to consider widely held beliefs in light of the

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Biblical worldview. Whether it's street engagement, publications, or other media, we want to weigh the cultural conversation against the

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Christian hope. For our first episode, the question we're considering is, has

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Christianity been good for the world? To see what the broader public thinks about this topic, we went out to a local university to get some feedback.

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Check out some of these responses. Alright, so in your opinion, has Christianity been good for the world?

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Um, yeah for some people. I think so, yeah. I think it brings people together, people of all different backgrounds.

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It might not be something that everyone agrees with, but it encourages people to be nice to each other and encourages overall positivity.

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Uh, I don't know man, I don't think too hard about it. Yes, yes. No. Okay, here to elaborate as to why not.

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I think organized religion as a whole has not been good for the world. Religion is a tool that has, I mean, on an individual level,

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I think religion can be beneficial, but in terms of a mass populace, religion is a tool that's been used by governments and other organizations to control and manipulate people.

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I think so. I don't really know how, I just know that it has been good. Yeah, sort of.

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Okay. Depends on who you ask, I guess. I don't really have any thoughts on that. Like, it has been good.

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Yes. Yes and no. Okay. Uh, no, because of the history and all that, um, crusades and countless deaths, but yeah for the moral.

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Absolutely. Um, people who are, um, Christian have really good morals. Not saying that people who aren't

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Christian don't have good morals, but yeah, I think it has. Now, I want to zoom in on two conversations and highlight a couple common threads that emerged by way of interacting with what was actually said.

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Let's go ahead and look at the first one. I'm an atheist, but objectively you have to say yes.

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Also. Um, I think Christianity isn't, in my opinion,

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Christianity shows people how they should be. Like, in what image they should, uh, they should make themselves.

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Me personally, I don't really need that sort of guidance in my life and I feel like I'm doing, I'm doing all right without it, but I feel like it does, it does shape a happier person in the end.

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That's a really interesting response. I don't think I've ever heard it worded like that. You said what image they should make themselves into?

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What image they feel like they should be, yeah. Okay. So not, I guess you'd say not conforming to the proper image to emulate, but they themselves would create it, the right image of themselves according to what they see is right.

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Yeah. Gotcha. Yeah. So what's fascinating here in speaking with an atheist about this question, did you notice the very first thing that he said, actually the first word that came out of his mouth,

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I asked the question, has Christianity been good for the world? And an atheist answers objectively, yes.

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Now notice something about this here. Two things really, an atheist is appealing to an objective standard right off the bat.

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But as an atheist, from the atheistic perspective, there really isn't a coherent ground to appeal to objective standards of anything.

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If all we are is matter in motion and we are descendants from bacteria and on and on and on, et cetera, et cetera, then really what is good and evil?

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What is right and wrong in a world without God? But did you notice on top of that, there's actually a usage of biblical language, explicitly biblical language.

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He said, Christianity has been good because it shows people in what image they should make themselves.

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And the ears of every Christian should immediately perk up at that moment and say, I know that.

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That sounds awfully familiar. That sounds a lot like what the Word of God says. Wait a minute,

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God is the one who made us in His image. And so here you have an unbeliever, an atheist, acknowledging objectively the benefit of the biblical worldview in Christianity and even using biblical language to make his point.

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However, there is a line drawn here in his response between objective truth and his own subjective experience.

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I wonder if you caught it because I repeated back to him what he had said and then he made it subjective by saying, into what image people feel they should be like.

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And so it's just fascinating that in a world like ours, in a culture like ours that is rapidly secularizing, speaking with an atheist about this question, it is inescapable even from his perspective that Christianity has been a positive force in the world by his very appeal to things like objective standards.

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So I would just say to this young man, to this atheist, I really love that you said Christianity is objectively good, but number one, how do you appeal to anything objective whatsoever given your worldview?

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And also, let me share with you an actual foundation to appeal to the things that you want to appeal to.

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Let me tell you about the God who made you in His image and why you're appealing to these things because Scripture is true.

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You can't help but doing these things because you are in the image of God. Now, what's interesting about these responses also is in talking with many people, they would readily affirm here that organized religion,

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Christianity, personal spirituality, things of that nature have been good from an individual perspective.

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That was affirmed numerous times. But the problem comes in affirming the goodness of Christianity at a societal level, which is ironic because as we listen to this next clip,

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I think as we pull these threads together, it will become more apparent here as to what the underlying narrative is surrounding this topic.

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So holding all of this together, let's look at a final clip to shed a little bit more light on some of these popular assumptions that he was making just now.

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Has Christianity been good for the world? I mean, it's definitely done something for the world.

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Okay. Yeah. You think it's positive? Some people say positive, some people negative, you know.

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Okay. In your opinion though, what kind of positive impact has it had? I mean, like, if it weren't for Christianity, you know,

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Western culture wouldn't really have spread as far as it has. And that influences a lot of what we see nowadays, what we believe.

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And I think, you know, whether it's good or not, you know, personally, it's hard to say because you're just so used to it.

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You're so used to seeing the impact, so, you know, that's what I think. We're so used to seeing the impact of Christianity in our world that we don't even notice it.

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Did you hear that? He's right. Christianity is responsible for the goodness of Western civilization and culture.

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Now to back up just a few steps here, he acknowledged that there has been good and bad. And as a Christian, we should be prepared to acknowledge these things also because whenever you pose this question to the populace, you hear a lot of things said along the lines of organized religion has been used to control people, manipulate people, wage wars, abuse people, brainwash them, and we have to acknowledge that as Christians.

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But the only way that we can both acknowledge those abuses and condemn them, condemn the wrong that was done, as he pointed out, is if we have a standard to stand on that is able to make sense of a world where sin is present and offer the solution and hope in Jesus Christ.

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And what we find in what this young man just affirmed is the reality that Christianity has not just been beneficial on an individual level, but on a societal level to the point that we don't even recognize it anymore.

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These things are just assumed. Kind of like in the last interaction, the appeal to objective standards, values, the way that we ought to treat our fellow man, the idea that there is an ideal that we should conform our lives to that is good not only for us, but for everyone.

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Anyone who is a serious student of history has to acknowledge that our present institutions and many of our values that we simply take for granted today all reflect a

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Christian origin, right? You might say that they're so obvious that they're just the air we breathe.

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We've been swimming in this pool of gospel blessing and goodness for so long that we don't even realize we're wet.

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Even in our secularizing culture that is rapidly deteriorating, we have to ask the question, where does our collective expectation for these things come from?

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Things like our appeal to equality or human rights or compassion and our expectation of empathy and how we treat people, our demand for justice in the world, our expectation of progress and everything that comes along with that.

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Well, it comes from the fact that we are made in the image of God.

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And so we appeal to these things. And we have to acknowledge the reality that we live in a nation that is the fruit of gospel blessing and the teachings of Jesus Christ.

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That's how these ideas became the air that we breathe. They're just the fruit of evangelization.

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We come to call them today aspects of common grace. And they have so formed the social fabric of our cultural understanding that you have atheists appealing to them without any ability to ground them at all.

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But here's what I would say. The gospel has been so good for the world, not just because it's changed individuals, but entire civilizations.

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People are happier and live more fulfilling lives wherever the gospel takes root in the world, whether we're talking about the sanctification of human life, ending societal injustices, elevating standards of morality, the treatment of women, our institutions of charity, education, health care, the dignity of work and vocation, the advances of the scientific revolution, our appreciation of art and literature.

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All of these things were given to us by the Christian worldview.

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So in interacting with that young man who affirmed that, again, objectively, unmistakably, you can't escape the reality that the gospel has formed our society and we enjoy many of those fruits still today,

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I would simply say, yeah, let me tell you a little bit more about this worldview that has come to shape your understanding and your willingness even to affirm that it has impacted you.

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There's a reason it's the air you breathe, and that's because it's not just beneficial for individuals, as so many people that I talked to regarding this topic claimed.

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Yes, this is good for individuals, but not so eager to affirm that at a societal level.

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But in fact, it has been good at a societal level. It's been very good, despite the failures of the past.

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That's all for this week on The Populace. If you want to see more of these interactions, subscribe to All Access at Apologyistudios .com,

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where we'll post full -length conversations. And we'd also like to hear your thoughts on this topic.

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How would you have answered or responded? How would you have thought through this on the spot and given an answer?

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Leave a comment below or send us an email at thepopulaceatapologyistudios .com.